EPL Week 22 round up

SWINDON, UK – Monday 8^st February 2010 and Week 22 opened with no significant change in the Top Ten Penalty Takers chart, but just when you thought he was about to drop out of the Top Ten British Penalty Takers chart Swindon Wildcat Joe Baird shot back up to number six.  Bracknell’s Michal Pinc moved up from 5 to 3 in Top Ten Points Scorers chart, and in the British chart Sheffield’s Matt Hayward entered at number ten, knocking out Slough’s Daniel Davies.
In the Top Ten Goal Scorers chart Bison’s Ondrej Lauko still rules the roost and apart from some minor juggling about only Sheffield’s Matthew Hayward had re-entered, this time to replace Wildcats’ Aaron Nell at the bottom. In the British chart there is even less movement, with just some swapping of places.
No player movements had been notified by the clubs, which isn’t that surprising, so it was onto the weekend. Saturday’s games and perhaps the not-surprising results first with the Flames winning 7-1 at home to the Raiders and the Lightning winning 4-2 at home to the Bees. The raised eyebrow result, or should I say the two raised-eyebrows result, has to be the Jets losing at home to the Phoenix seeing as the Slough team have been the most consistent victors against them so far this season with three straight wins, although you have to say fair play to the Raiders who have managed two.
The Phoenix were back to a full strength team, including Ed Courtenay recently stranded in Canada by snow, and look well on their way to again being in contention for the title.
That means the single eyebrow-raising result must be the Phantoms at home not managing to resist the Bison, despite dominating and leading for much of the game. But to be fair, the Phantoms were still without Julian Smith, Tom Carlton and Callum Fowler. And then there was the Wildcats who managed to force yet another game beyond regular time, the tenth this season, only to lose the penalty shoot-out, but all credit to Aaron Nell for scoring a hat-trick.
This all meant that by Saturday’s end Manchester had jumped above Slough, and the gap between the top four dropped to seven points.

Sunday saw Basingstoke with a comfortable win against Sheffield with Slovakian Ondrej Lauko scoring another hat-trick, although it was the Scimitars who had actually taken an early lead. In fact, this was the second game of the weekend where the Bison had to come from behind. The Lightning, with Barry Hollyhead starting in goal and both Ross Green and Jacob Heron missing, had a not-so-comfortable win at Swindon as the Wildcats came back from four goals down after a penalty shot by Nell turned things around. The Jets rebounded from the previous evening’s defeat against the Phoenix with a hard thrashing of Bracknell, and talking of thrashings, the Phantoms issued one to the Raiders at Romford in their first shut-out of the season.  
That just leaves what must be the result of the weekend with the Flames going to Manchester and leaving with the two points in what was a well deserved but hard-fought win. The outcome was pretty certain part way into the second period and a short-handed goal by Martin Masa sealed the deal, but the Phoenix went down fighting and took cartful’s of penalties in the process, including Ed Courtenay with a game penalty for abusing the ref.
So, at the threat of having to eat the positive words about the Manchester Saturday evening’s performance, by Sunday evening Slough had regained their second spot, Guildford and Manchester share the same points total and the cat-and-mouse-at the top continues with the spread back to nine with the Lightning still leading the pack. Can’t wait to see what next week brings! Contact the author Bill.Collins@Prohockeynews.com